1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to digital image processing, and more particularly to circuits for implementing motion estimation (ME) and motion compensation (MC).
2. Description of Related Art
Motion estimation (ME) is one technique of digital image processing for determining a motion vector (MV) that represents object movement between two adjacent frames in a video sequence. The MV is then applied in motion compensation (MC) to create an intermediate frame or frames between the two adjacent frames, facilitating, for example, frame rate up conversion (FRUC) or video compression.
There are some algorithms disclosed for performing the ME or MC. However, most ME or MC algorithms are math-heavy and thus are not suitable to be implemented by software in a real-time application. Even though the ME or MC algorithm may be implemented in hardware circuit to realize the real-time application, the required circuit area is usually too tremendous to be practically implemented at an acceptable cost.
For the reason that conventional ME or MC algorithms are either ineffective or unpractical for implementation, a need has arisen to propose a novel ME or MC algorithm and an associated circuit for implementing the ME/MC algorithm.